I have a dream that won’t cease. It’s actually more of a nightmare.

Kyuhyun has tears running down his face. His hair was so dark and the sky was painfully bright. Both knees dug into the ground, blood running down his fingertips and body splattered with dirt. Lips quivering, he stared forward and I tried to touch him – ask him what had happened.

My body wasn’t in the dream though.

I could only watch.

A gun’s click shattered the silence. The cold metal lined up against the back of Kyuhyun’s skull. Standing over him, wielding the weapon, was Donghae with his little smile and deep gaze.

Those weren’t the eyes that captivated me. Instead, it was the pair Kyuhyun beheld the end with. His brown irises were shimmering yet empty, and the pupils were large and black.

Slowly, eyelids slipped down and his lips parted with subsiding tears.

Donghae was looking straight up at me, able to see me apparently. “Do you regret it?”

I woke up to my own screams, a cold sweat drenching my clothes and an erratic heartbeat that unsettled me.

In the doorway, Donghae watched me. When I focused on him, his expression was somewhere between cold and curious. There was a towel around his neck, arms crossed over his muscular torso. A fresh glow still remained on his skin from what I figured had been a shower. Sweatpants hung low around his angular, lean hips and probably were more provocative than they should’ve been.

“What?” I breathed, swallowing dryly.

“When the person you live with becomes hysterical, it’s recommended to check up on them,” he mused.

“I’m not…,” I trailed off, wondering then if he was right. This would mark the third time I had woken up screaming or crying or panicking. “I need a shower.” Pushing the blanket off, I began getting up, only to have Donghae stop me.

He continued hovering in the doorway, eyes intent. “If all you needed was a shower, then this wouldn’t be a recurring event.” One foot slid across the carpet and then he was gliding closer. “What are you dreaming about?”

“You don’t care.”

Donghae sat down on the edge of the bed, leaning back on his palms. “You’re the only person I will ever care for, so let me learn to care for you.”

That’s right. We were bound together by our chosen paths in life. The problem was that we had no romantic chemistry or even sibling chemistry. Our relationship was nonexistent and therefore, forced at its best.

“I dream about Kyuhyun,” I stated, not daring to look at him, “and you’re holding a gun to his head. It varies, but that’s the essence of it. …And the words you say before you shoot him are always the same. ‘Do you regret it?’” I doubted that he sincerely felt anything about what I had to say. Out loud, it sounded less terrifying than it had in my head. “I wake up before you kill him every time.”

He didn’t take much time to answer me. “Maybe you should answer the question then.”

I finally turned to him, seeing that he had gotten closer at some point.

Donghae kicked himself up and off the blankets. “It’s simple, isn’t it, Ryeowook? Do you regret it? Yes or no?” He headed towards the door, yawning and stretching his arms. “I’m gonna make breakfast.”

“Without supervision?” I prompted absently.

I heard him laugh a little. “If I burn our place down, then we’ll just make Siwon and Yesung buy us a new one.”

Studying the list of tasks, I heaved a sigh. There were still so many things to learn before I could move up. A majority of them were painful and/or nerve-wracking. Donghae would probably get annoyed again with me shouting ‘daylight’ every few seconds.

I closed my eyes, struggling to organize everything mentally. One of the first things that came to mind was obviously the dream. If I didn’t have it every other day, it was at least once a week. During my active hours, I attempted to do all I could to avoid contemplating it in any of the varying forms.

“What do you want to work on today?”

“Nothing stressful,” I muttered, peering up at Donghae.

He cracked that tiny smile of his and then said, “Let’s go then.”

I had no idea what he meant, but I was already following him out the apartment door. We ventured through the building, down the elevator and only came out two levels underground. Aside from grocery shopping, I never left the building. That was probably how Siwon had planned it. Until I was ready in two years to take over for him, he was taking every precaution to keep me out of any uncontrollable situations.

“Love is a liability.”

The elevator doors opened to a firing range. No one else occupied it at the moment. There were a few targets set up and several guns of different shapes and sizes lined up on a rack.

“Huh?” I blinked, having not been paying attention to Donghae.

He picked up a handgun, loaded it, and came back over to me in mere seconds. His eyes were glowing fiercely, meaning he must have felt in his element. If this was his element though, I should’ve feared him much more.

“I said: Love is a liability,” he repeated, turning me around to face the target. Slipping a silencer onto the weapon, he came up behind me, broader frame curving around my back. Long, nimble fingers closed around mine, setting the gun properly. “It’s what Siwon taught you, isn’t it? You’re still thinking about Kyuhyun,” Donghae’s voice rushed over my ear, every part of him thousands of times more amplified in the situation, “that’s why you’re not sleeping and why you’re afraid of falling for me.”

The gun recoiled.

I gasped, but Donghae was there like a safety net holding me steady. Shaking off the buzz, I lifted my head, saying, “That isn’t why I’m not falling for…” My heart jumped at how close we were, those irritating, tantalizing eyes dragging me in.

“Then what is it?” he murmured.

Damn. I swallowed hard, “Because we were forced together. That’s…why.”

He looked ready to laugh at that. “You’re still not seeing clearly.” Before I could say anything, he pressed a phone into my hand, the gun disappearing from sight. It looked like a normal flip phone, nothing special. “It tracks calls,” Donghae stated, “any phone that has ever connected with this device was bugged, in a sense.”

“What does this mean?”

Taking the phone back for a moment, he punched in a code and then handed it back. A map took up the screen with a blinking red circle between gridlines. “Kyuhyun. Until you face him, you’re going to continue wavering over this decision.” Donghae’s expression grew harder. “The longer you insist on hesitating, the more time is being wasted.”

“But what about—”

He snatched my arm, pulling me to the elevators. “—you’re going to need to be quiet. I’ll handle everything, so don’t worry about it.”

The doors opened on the main floor. We stepped out and he let me go. “I think I misjudged you, Donghae.”

“You didn’t misjudge me,” he smiled faintly, “you’re just seeing another side of me.” And then he nodded towards the exit.

I didn’t waste any more time, knowing full well that I had wasted weeks thinking about Kyuhyun and what could have been and so much other bull. If possible, I had to clear up everything as Donghae had advised. There was no way I could continue living with one foot in and one foot out.

It had been nearly sundown when I left, and it was dark out by the time I told the cab to stop. To be fair, the entire situation lacked drama and slow-motion walks. In fact, at the time, I thought it was all very perfect and surreal.

The moment I arrived at the red marker on the tracking phone, I found Kyuhyun who was heading towards a boarding train. I quickly climbed out of the cab, starting to walk towards him, struggling to cut through the throngs of people. My body was moving on its own, fighting breathlessly, painstakingly, to reach his fading figure.

It wasn’t a dream in that moment.

It was more than my current reality.

It was less than what I used to know.

Really, it was much less than the past. A familiar face in one of the windows caught my attention. Changmin was sitting in the train, and then I knew where Kyuhyun would be next. As for trying to board the vehicle, I didn’t. My body had moved first and now it stopped me first.

Noise turned into muffled shuffling of feet and whispered voices. Through the window, I watched Kyuhyun come up to Changmin. The latter stood up pressing his lips to Kyuhyun’s as if it was the most natural thing in the world. In turn, Kyuhyun pushed him away with a laugh.

The painfully loud blaring of the train ripped through my mind.

At some point, the station had emptied.

My eyes wandered back into focus in time to see Kyuhyun’s disbelieving face. He stared for only a second and then he disappeared from sight. A moment later, he reappeared at the closed sliding doors. I didn’t see anything else though.

I was walking away. There was no reason to stay longer. I had my answer.

No, I didn’t regret it.